Watch This Film Choreographed by Two Miami City Ballet Dancers

November 3, 2016

It’s no secret that we love a good dance film, especially when it involves dancers exercising their creativity in unexpected ways, and stretching their choreographic muscles.

The new short film I Wish is a collaboration between Miami City Ballet corps dancers Adriana Pierce and Eric Trope, who both choreographed the movement, and Miami-based filmmaker Alejandro Gonzalvez. They filmed in various locations around Miami, including the MCB studios, and used music by local band My Deer. The result reads as both an intimate pas de deux and a love letter to the city itself. In an email, Pierce wrote that the project explores “the struggle to maintain a strong personal identity within relationships which may be less than perfect.”

While there’s nothing like the thrill and immediacy of live performance, sometimes a film can explore movement in ways that would be difficult to replicate onstage. Here, the camera captures subtle moments within the choreography, like two hands touching and slowly drifting apart, or the emotion that passes between the dancers when a look is exchanged. Powerful shots of the artists silhouetted against a wall of windows in the studio are interspersed with scenes of them in street clothes, with the ocean as their backdrop.

Watch the full video below: